I'd long been planning to do a personal spiritual retreat. I thought I'd do it at the St. Francis Retreat Center in San Juan Bautista, where I attended a church board retreat several years ago. A peaceful place with beautiful grounds.
Guess not.
I sometimes go barreling through the newspaper and miss important things. It was my wife Terry who pointed out to me the Gilroy Dispatch article that described how the main building of the center had burned down. No personal retreat there. Not anytime soon.
This while preparing to attend my grandmother's funeral this week in Southern California. She was 99, had led a great life, and was doing well up until the past several months. But I knew she hadn't been doing well recently, and we might not have her that much longer. When she left us we all knew she was ready to move on, but it's still hard to accept. The funeral is Thursday, so we'll be flying down to Southern California on Wednesday. It will be a simple graveside funeral, as she requested.
I appreciated my grandmother, recognized the fragility of life, thought about and asked about her often, and knew our time with her was limited.
The St. Francis Retreat Center I figured would always be around, but I was wrong. As I understand it, the beautiful grounds are still intact, but no main building means no retreats. I can do my personal retreat, but it will have to be somewhere else.
Sometimes you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone.
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